Monday, February 20, 2012

“Silent
Snow, Secret Snow” is a study of developing schizophrenic insanity-particularly
touching because the victim is an all too imaginative and introspective little
boy, scarcely twelve years old.

A.'. A.'.

Just why it should have happened, or why it should
have happened just when it did, he could not, of course, possibly have said;
nor perhaps could it even have occurred to him to ask. The thing was above all
a secret, something to be preciously concealed from Mother and Father; and to
that very fact it owed an enormous part of its deliciousness. It was like a
peculiarly beautiful trinket to be carried unmentioned in one’s
trouser-pocket—a rare stamp, an old coin, a few tiny gold links found trodden
out of shape on the path in the park, a pebble of carnelian, a sea shell
distinguishable from all others by an unusual spot or stripe—and, as if it were
any one of these, he carried around with him everywhere a warm and persistent
and increasingly beautiful sense of possession. Nor was it only a sense of
possession-it was also a sense of protection. It was as if, in some delightful
way, his secret gave him a fortress, a wall behind which he could retreat into
heavenly seclusion. This was almost the first thing he had noticed about
it-apart from the oddness of the thing itself-and it was this that now again,
for the fiftieth time, occurred to him, as he sat in the little schoolroom. It
was the half hour for geography. Miss Robinson was revolving with one finger,
slowly, a huge terrestrial globe which had been placed on her desk. The green
and yellow continents passed and re-passed, questions were asked and answered,
and now the little girl in front of him, Astrith, who had a funny little
constellation of freckles on the back of her neck, exactly like the Big Dipper,
was standing up and telling Miss Robinson that the equator was the line that
ran round the middle.

Miss Robinson’s face, which was old and
grayish and kindly, with gray stiff curls beside the cheeks, and eyes that swam
very brightly, like little minnows, behind thick glasses, wrinkled itself into
a complication of amusements.

“Ah! I see. The earth is wearing a belt, or a
sash. Or someone drew a line around it!”

“Oh, no-not that-I mean”-

In the general laughter, he did not share, or
only a very little. He was thinking about the Arctic and Antarctic regions,
which of course, on the globe, were white. Miss Robinson was now telling them
about tropics, the jungles, the steamy heat or equatorial swamps, where the
birds and butterflies, and even the snakes, were like living jewels. As he
listened to these things, he was already, with a pleasant sense of half-effort,
putting his secret between himself and the words. Was it really an effort at
all? For effort implied something voluntary, and perhaps even something one did
not especially want; whereas this was distinctly pleasant, and came almost of
its own accord. All he needed to do was to think of that morning, the first one,
and then of all the others-

But it was all so absurdly simple! It had
amounted to all so little. It was nothing, just an idea-and just why it should
have become so wonderful, so permanent, was a mystery-a very pleasant one, to
be sure, but also, in an amusing way, foolish. However, without ceasing to
listen to Miss Robinson, who had now moved up to the North Temperate Zone, he
deliberated his memory of the first morning. It was only a moment or two after
he had awakened-or perhaps the moment itself. But was there, to be exact, an
exact moment? Was one awake all at once? Or was it gradual? Anyway, it was
after he had stretched a lazy hand up towards the head rail, and yawned, and
then relaxed again among his warm covers, all the more grateful on a December morning,
that the thing had happened. Suddenly, for no reason, he had thought of the
postman, he remembered the postman. Perhaps there was nothing so odd in that.
After all, he heard the postman almost every morning in his life-his heavy
boots could be heard clumping round the corner at the top of the little cobbled
hill-street, and then, progressively nearer, progressively louder, the double
knock at each door, the crossings and re-crossings of the street, till finally
the clumsy steps came stumbling across to the very door, and the tremendous
knock came which shook the house itself.

(Miss Robinson was saying “Vast wheat-growing
areas in North America and Siberia.”

Astrith had for the moment placed her left
hand across the back of her neck.)

But on this particular morning, the first
morning, as he lay there with his eyes closed, he had for some reason waited
for the postman. He wanted to hear him come round the corner. And that was
precisely the joke- he never did. He never came. He never had come -round the
corner -again. For when at last the steps were heard, they had already, he was
quite sure, come a little down the hill, to the first house; and even so, the
steps were curiously different- they were softer, they had a new secrecy about
them, they were muffled and indistinct; and while the rhythm of them was the
same, it now said a new thing- it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold,
it said sleep. And he had understood the situation at once- nothing could have
seemed simpler- there had been snow in the night, such as all winter he had
been longing for; and it was this which had rendered the postman’s first
footsteps inaudible, and the later ones faint. Of course! How lovely! And even
now it must be snowing- it was going to be a snowy day- the long white ragged
lines were drifting and sifting across the street, across the faces of the old
houses, whispering and hushing, making little triangles of white in the corners
between cobblestones, seething a little when the wind blew them over the ground
to a drifted corner; and so it would be all day, getting deeper and deeper and
growing more and more silent.

(Miss Robinson was saying “Land of perpetual
snow.”)

All this time, of course (while he lay in
bed), he had kept his eyes closed, listening to the nearer progress of the
postman, the muffled footsteps thumping and slipping on the snow-sheathed
cobbles; and all the other sounds- the double knocks, a frosty far-off voice or
two, a bell ringing thinly and softly as if under a sheet of ice- had the same
slightly abstracted quality, as if removed by one degree from actuality- as if
everything in the world had been insulated by snow. But when at last, pleased,
he opened his eyes, and turned them towards the window, to see for himself this
long-desired and now so clearly imagined miracle-what he saw instead was
brilliant sunlight on a roof; and when, astonished, he jumped out of bed and
stared down into the street, expecting to see the cobbles obliterated by snow,
he saw nothing but the bare bright cobbles themselves.

Queer, the effect this extraordinary surprise
had had upon him-all the following morning he had kept with him a sense as of
snow falling about him, a secret screen of new snow between himself and the
world. If he had not dreamed such a thing-and how could he have dreamed it
while awake?-how else could one explain it? In any case, the delusion had been
so vivid as to affect his entire behaviour. He could not now remember whether
it was on the first or the second morning-or was it even the third? - that his
mother had drawn attention to some oddness in his manner.

“But my darling”-she had said at the
breakfast table-“what has come over you? You don’t seem to be listening…”

And how often that very thing had happened
since!

(Miss Robinson was now asking if anyone knew
the difference between the North Pole and the Magnetic Pole. Astrid was holding
up her flickering freckled hand, and he could see the four white dimples that
marked the knuckles.)

Perhaps it hadn’t been either the second or
third morning-or even the fourth or fifth. How could he be sure? How could he
be sure just when the delicious progress had become clear? Just when it had
really begun? The intervals weren’t very precise… All he now knew was, that at
some point or other- perhaps the second day, perhaps the sixth-he had noticed
that the presence of the snow was a little more insistent, the sound of it
clearer; and, conversely, the sound of the postman’s footsteps more indistinct.
Not only could he not hear the steps come round the corner, he could not even
hear them at the first house. It was below the second house that he heard them;
and a few days later again, below the third. Gradually, gradually, the snow was
becoming heavier, the sound of its seething louder, the cobblestones more and
more muffled. When he found, each morning, on going to the window, after the
ritual of listening, that the roofs and cobbles were bare as ever, it made no
difference. This was, after all, only what he had expected. It was even what
pleased him, what rewarded him: the thing was his own, belonged to no one else.
No one else knew about it, not even his mother and father. There, outside, were
the bare cobbles; and here, inside, was the snow. Snow growing heavier each
day, muffling the world, hiding the ugly, and deadening increasingly-above
all-the steps of the postman.

“But my darling”-she had said at the
luncheon table-“what has come over you? You don’t seem to listen when people
speak to you. That’s the third time I’ve asked you to pass your plate…”

How was one to explain this to Mother? or to
Father? There was, of course, nothing to be done about it: nothing. All one
could do was to laugh embarrassedly, pretend to be a little ashamed, apologize,
and take a sudden and somewhat disingenuous interest in what was being done or
said. The cat had stayed out all night. He had a curious swelling on his left
cheek- perhaps somebody had kicked him, or a stone had struck him. Mrs.
Kensington was or was not coming to tea. The house was going to be cleaned, or
“turned out,” on Wednesday instead of Friday. A new lamp was provided for his
evening work-perhaps it was eyestrain which accounted for this new and so
peculiar vagueness of his-Mother was looking at him with amusement as she said
this, but with something else as well. A new lamp? A new lamp. No Mother, Yes
Mother. School is going very well. The geometry is very easy. The history is
very dull. The geography is very interesting-particularly when it takes one to
the North Pole. Why the North Pole? Oh, well, it would be fun to be an
explorer. Another Peary or Scott or Shackleton. And then abruptly he found his
interest in the talk at an end, stared at the pudding on his plate, listened,
waited, and began once more- ah how heavenly, too, the first beginnings-to hear
or feel-for could he actually hear it?-the silent snow.

(Miss Robinson was telling them about the
search for the Northwest Passage, about Hendrik Hudson.)

This had been, indeed, the only distressing
feature of the new experience: the fact that it so increasingly had brought him
into a kind of mute misunderstanding, or even conflict, with his father and
mother. It was as if he were trying to lead a double life. On the one hand he
had to be David Jones, and keep up the appearance of being that person-dress,
wash, and answer intelligently when spoken to;- on the other, he had to explore
this new world which had been opened to him. Nor could there be the slightest
doubt-not the slightest-that the new world was the profounder and more wonderful
of the two. It was irresistible. It was miraculous. Its beauty was simply
beyond anything-beyond speech as beyond thought- utterly incommunicable. But
how then, between the two worlds, of which he was thus constantly aware, was he
to keep a balance? One must get up, one must go to breakfast, and one must talk
with Mother, go to school, do one’s lessons- and, in all this, try not to
appear to much a fool. But if all the while one was also trying to extract the
full deliciousness of another and quite separate existence, one which could not
easily (if at all) be spoken of-how was one to manage? How was one to explain?
Would it be safe to explain? Would it be absurd? Would it merely mean that he
would get into some obscure kind of trouble?

These thoughts came and went, came and went,
as softly and secretly as the snow; they were not precisely a disturbance,
perhaps they were even a pleasure; he liked to have them; their presence was
something almost palpable, something he could stroke with his hand, without closing
his eyes, and without ceasing to see Miss Robinson and the schoolroom and the
globe and the freckles on Astrid’s neck; nevertheless he did in a sense cease
to see, or to see the obvious external world, and substituted for this vision
the vision of snow, the sound of snow, and the slow, almost soundless, approach
of the postman. Yesterday, it had been only at the sixth house that the postman
had become audible; the snow was much deeper now, it was falling more swiftly
and heavily, the sound of its seething was more distinct, more soothing, and
more persistent. And this morning, it had been-as nearly as he could
figure-just above the seventh house-perhaps only a step or two above: at most,
he had heard two or three footsteps before the knock had sounded…. And with
each such narrowing of the sphere, each nearer approach of the limit at which
the postman was first audible, it was odd how sharply was increased the amount
of illusion which had to be carried into the ordinary business of daily life.
Each day it was harder to get out of bed, to go to the window, to look out at
the-as always-perfectly empty and snowless street. Each day it was more
difficult to go through the perfunctory motions of greeting Mother and Father
at breakfast, to reply to their questions, to put his books together and go to
school. And at school, how extraordinarily hard to conduct with success
simultaneously the public life and the life that was secret. There were times
when he longed-positively ached-to tell everyone about it-to burst out with
it-only to be checked almost at once by a far-off feeling as of some faint
absurdity which was inherent in it-but was it absurd?-and more importantly by a
sense of mysterious power in his very secrecy. Yes: it must be kept secret.
That, more and more, became clear. At whatever cost to himself, whatever pain
to others-

(Miss Robinson looked straight at him,
smiling, and said, “Perhaps we’ll ask David. I’m sure David will come out of
his day-dream long enough to be able to tell us. Won’t you, David?” He rose
slowly from his chair, resting one hand on the brightly varnished desk, and
deliberately stared through the snow towards the blackboard. It was an effort,
but it was amusing to make it. “Yes,” he said slowly, “it was what we now call
the Hudson River.” This he thought to be the Northwest Passage. He was
disappointed.” He sat down again, and as he did so Astrid half turned in her
chair and gave him a shy smile, of approval and admiration.)

At whatever pain to others.

This part of it was very puzzling, very
puzzling. Mother was very nice, and so was Father. Yes, that was all true
enough. He wanted to be nice to them, to tell them everything-and yet, was it
really wrong of him to want to have a secret place of his own?

At bedtime, the night before, Mother had
said, “If this goes on, my lad, we’ll have to see a doctor, we will!We can’t have our boy”- But what was it she
had said? “Living in another world”? “Live so far away”? The word “far” had
been in it, he was sure, and then Mother had taken up a magazine again and
laughed a little, but with an expression which wasn’t mirthful. He had felt
sorry for her….

The bell rang for dismissal. The sound came
to him through long curved parallels of falling snow. He saw Astrid rise, and
had himself risen almost as soon-but not quite as soon-as she.

II

On the walk homeward, which was timeless, it
pleased him to see through the accompaniment, or counterpoint, of the snow, the
items of mere externality on his way. There were many kinds of bricks in the sidewalks,
and laid in many kinds of pattern. The garden walls were to various, some of
wooden palings, some of plaster, some of stone. Twigs of bushes leaned over the
walls; the little hard green winter-buds of lilac, on gray stems, sheathed and
fat; other branches very thin and fine and black and desiccated. Dirty sparrows
huddled in bushes, as dull in color as dead fruit left in the leafless trees. A
single starling creaked on a weather vane. In the gutter, beside a drain, was a
scrap of torn and dirty newspaper, caught in a little delta of filth: the word
HEARTBURN appeared in large capitals, and below it was a letter from Mrs.
Angela M. Barnet, 2001 Cyprus Hill, Beckenham, London, to the effect that after
being a sufferer for years she had been cured by Carter’s pills. In the little
delta, beside the fan-shaped and deeply runneled continent of brown mud, were
lost twigs, descended from their parent trees, dead matches, a rusty
horse-chestnut burr, a small concentration of sparkling gravel on the lip of the
sewer, a fragment of eggshell, a streak of yellow sawdust which had been wet
and was now dry and congealed, a brown pebble, and a broken feather. Further on
was a cement sidewalk, ruled into geometrical parallelograms, with a brass
inlay at one end commemorating the contractors who had laid it, and, halfway
across, an irregular and random series of dog tracks, immortalized in synthetic
stone. He knew these well, and always stepped on them; to cover the little
hollows with his own foot had always been a queer pleasure; today he did it
once more, but perfunctorily and detached, all the while thinking of something
else. That was a dog, a long time ago, who had made a mistake and walked on the
cement while it was still wet. He had probably wagged his tail, but that hadn’t
been recorded. Now, David Jones, aged twelve, on his way home from school,
crossed the same river, which in the meantime had frozen solid. Homeward
through the snow, the snow falling in bright sunshine. Homeward?

Then came the gateway with the two posts
surmounted by egg-shaped stones which had been cunningly balanced on their
ends, and mortared in the very act of balance: a source of perpetual wonder. On
the brick wall just beyond, the letters A.A. had been stenciled, presumably for
some purpose. A.A.? A.A.

The red hydrant, with a little green-painted
chain attached to the brass screw-cap.

The willow tree, with the great gray wound in
the bark, kidney-shaped, into which he always put his hand-to feel the cold but
living wood. The injury, he had been sure, was due to the gnaw-ings of a
tethered horse. But now it deserved only a passing palm, a merely tolerant eye.
There were more important things. Miracles. Beyond the thoughts of trees, mere
willows. Beyond the thoughts of sidewalks, mere stone, mere brick, mere cement.
Beyond the thoughts even of his own shoes, which trod these sidewalks
obediently, bearing a burden-far above-of elaborate mystery. He watched them.
They were not polished; he had neglected them, for a very good reason: they were
one of the many parts of the increasing difficulty of the daily return to daily
life, the morning struggle. To get up, having at last opened one’s eyes, to go
to the window, and discover no snow, to wash, to dress, to descend the curving
stairs to breakfast-

At whatever pain to others, nevertheless, one
must persevere in severance, since the incommunicability of the experience
demanded it. It was desirable of course to be kind to Mother and Father,
especially as they seemed to be worried, but it was also desirable to be
resolute. If they should decide-as appeared likely-to consult the doctor,
Doctor Roberts, and have David inspected, his heart listened to through a kind
of Dictaphone, his lungs, his stomach—well, that was all right. He would go
through with it. He would give them answer for question, too-perhaps such
answers as they hadn’t expected? No. That would never do. For the secret world
must, at all costs, be preserved.

The bird-house in the apple-tree was empty-it
was the wrong time of year for wrens. The little round black door had lost its
pleasure. The wrens were enjoying other houses, other nests, remoter trees. But
this too was a notion which he only vaguely and grazingly entertained-as if,
for the moment, he merely touched an edge of it; there was something further
on, which was already assuming a sharper importance; something which already
teased at the corners of his eyes, teasing also at the corner of his mind. It
was funny to think that he so wanted this, so awaited it-and yet found himself
enjoying this momentary dalliance with the bird-house, as if for a quite
deliberate postponement and enhancement of the approaching pleasure. He was
aware of his delay, of his smiling and detached and now almost uncomprehending
gaze at the little bird-house; he knew what he was going to look at next: it
was his own little cobbled hill-street, his own house, the little river at the
bottom of the hill, the grocer’s shop with the cardboard man in the window-and
now, thinking of all this, he turned his head, still smiling, and looking
quickly right and left through the snow-laden sunlight.

And the mist of snow, as he had foreseen, was
still on it- a ghost of snow falling in the bright sunlight, softly and
steadily floating and turning and pausing, soundlessly meeting the snow that
covered, as with a transparent mirage, the bare bright cobbles. He loved it-he
stood still and loved it. Its beauty was paralyzing-beyond all words, all
experience, all dream. No fairy-story he had ever read could be compared with
it-none had ever given him this extraordinary combination of ethereal
loveliness with something else, unnamable, which was just faintly and
deliciously terrifying. What was this thing? As he thought of it, he looked
upward toward his own bedroom window, which was open-and it was as if he looked
straight into the room and saw himself lying half awake in his bed. There he
was-at this very instant he was still perhaps actually- more truly there than
standing here at the edge of the cobbled hill-street, with one hand lifted to
shade his eyes against the snow-sun. Had he indeed ever left his room, in all
this time? Since that very first morning? Was the whole progress still being
enacted there, was it still the same morning, and himself not yet wholly awake?
And even now, had the postman not yet come round the corner?…

This idea amused him, and automatically as he
though of it, he turned his head and looked toward the top of the hill. There
was, of course, nothing there-nothing and no one. The street was empty and
quiet. And all the more because of its emptiness it occurred to him to count
the houses-a thing which, oddly enough, he hadn’t before thought of doing. Of
course, he had known there weren’t many-many, that is, on his own side of the
street, which were the ones that figured in the postman’s progress-but
nevertheless it came to him as something of a shock to find that there were
precisely six, above his own house-his own house was the seventh.

Six!

Astonished, he looked at his own house-looked
at the door, on which was the number 13 - and then realized that the whole
thing was exactly and logically and absurdly what he ought to have known. Just
the same, the realization gave him abruptly, and even a little frighteningly, a
sense of hurry. He was being hurried-he was being rushed. For-he knit his
brows-he couldn’t be mistaken-it was just above the seventh house, his own
house, that the postman had first been audible this very morning. But in that
case-in that case-did it mean that tomorrow he would hear nothing? The knock he
had heard must have been the knock of their own door. Did it mean- and this was
an idea which gave him a really extraordinary feeling of surprise- that he
would never hear the postman again?-that tomorrow morning the postman would
already have passed the house, in a snow by then so deep as to render his
footsteps completely inaudible? That he would have made his approach down the
snow-filled street so soundlessly, so secretly, that he, David Jones, there
lying in bed, would not have awakened in time, or, waking, would have heard
nothing?

But now could that be? Unless even the
knocker should be muffled in the snow-frozen tight,perhaps?…But in that case-

A vague feeling of disappointment came over
him; a vague sadness, as if he felt himself deprived of something which he had
long looked forward to, something much prized. After all this, all this
beautiful progress, the slow delicious advance of the postman through the
silent and secret snow, the knock creeping closer each day, and the footsteps
nearer, the audible compass of the world thus daily narrowed, narrowed,
narrowed, as the snow soothingly and beautifully encroached and deepened, after
all this, was he to be defrauded of the one thing he had so wanted-to be able
to count, as it were, the last two or three solemn footsteps, as they finally
approached his own door? Was it all going to happen, at the end, so suddenly?
Or indeed, had it already happened? With no slow and subtle gradations of
menace, in which he could luxuriate?

He gazed upward again, toward his own window
which flashed in the sun: and this time almost with a feeling that it would be
better if he were still in bed, in that room; for in that case this must still
be the first morning, and there would be six more mornings to come-or, for that
matter, seven or eight or nine-how could he be sure? or even more.

III

After supper, the inquisition began. He stood
before the doctor, under the lamp, and submitted silently to the usual
thumpings and tappings.

“Now will you please say ‘Ah!’?”

“Ah!”

“Now again please, if you don’t mind.”

“Ah.”

“Say it slowly, and hold it if you can”-

“Ah-h-h-h-h”-

“Good.”

How silly all this was. As if it had anything
to do with his throat! Or his heart or lungs!

Relaxing his mouth, of which the corners,
after all this absurd stretching, felt uncomfortable, he avoided the doctor’s
eyes, and stared toward the fireplace, past his mother’s feet (in gray
slippers) which projected from the green chair, and his father’s feet(in brown
slippers) which stood neatly side by side on the hearth rug.

“Hm. There is certainly nothing wrong there…”

He felt the doctor’s eyes fixed upon him,
and, as if merely to be polite, returned the look, but with a feeling of
justifiable evasiveness.

“Now, young man, tell me,-do you feel all
right?”

“Yes, sir, quite all right.”

“No headaches? No dizziness?”

“No I don’t think so.”

“Let me see. Let’s get a book, if you don’t
mind-yes, thank you, that will do splendidly- and now, David, if you’ll just
read it, holding it as you would normally hold it”-

He took the book and read:

“Now I plunge my pen against the page and
scribble toward a purpose unperceived. For here within my fragile fractured
frame, I am no more a poet than a rose; and though the visions I do view, bid
beauty to my meaning (my muse is busied elsewhere, nursing other selves).
Therefore unfailingly I fall into shadow, baptized by merciless melancholy.
Enabled to imbue with silhouette of life a bit of martyred matter, from so faint
a slate as this, I would label it as mine (ostensibly): mine to brag of, mine
to burn; but when I feature feelings from the fire, they float away from me,
like writing on the water.”

He stopped, tentatively, and lowered the
heavy book.

“No-as I thought-there is certainly no
superficial sign of eye-strain.”

Silence thronged the room, and he was aware
of the focused scrutiny of the three people who confronted him…

“We could have his eyes examined-but I
believe it is something else.”

“What could it be?” This was his father’s
voice.

“It’s only this curious absent-minded”- This
was his mother’s voice.

In the presence of the doctor, they both
seemed irritatingly apologetic.

“I believe it is something else. Now David-I
would like very much to ask you a question or two. You will answer them won’t
you- you know I am an old, old friend of yours, eh? That’s right!”

His back was thumped twice by the doctor’s
fat fist- then the doctor was grinning at him with false amiability, while with
one finger-nail he was scratching the top button of his waistcoat. Beyond the
doctor’s shoulder was the fire, the fingers of flame making light
prestidigitation against the sooty fire-back, the soft sound of their random
flutter the only sound.

“I would like to know- is there anything that
worries you?” The doctor was again smiling, his eyelids low against the little
black pupils, in each of which was a tiny white bead of light. Why answer him?
Why answer him at all? “At whatever pain to others”-but it was all a nuisance,
this necessity for resistance, this necessity for attention: it was as if one
had been stood up on a brilliantly lighted stage, under a great round blaze of
spotlight; as if one were merely a trained seal, or a performing dog, or a
fish, dipped out of an aquarium and held up by the tail. It would serve them
right if he were merely to bark or growl. Andmeanwhile, to miss these last few precious hours, these hours of which
every minute was more beautiful than the last, more menacing-? He still looked,
as if from a great distance, at the beads of light in the doctor’s eyes, at the
fixed false smile, and then, beyond, once more at his mother’s slippers, his
father’s slippers, the soft flutter of the fire. Even here, even amongst these
hostile presences, and in this arranged light, he could see the snow, he could
hear it- it was in the corners of the room, where the shadow was deepest, under
the sofa, behind the half-opened door which led to the dining room. It was
gentler here, softer, its seethe the quietest of whispers, as if, in deference
to the drawing room, it had quite deliberately put on its “manners”; it kept
itself out of sight, obliterated itself, but distinctly with an air of saying,
“Ah, but just wait! Wait till we are alone together! Then I will begin to tell
you something new! Something white! Something cold! Something sleepy! Something
of cease, and peace, and the long bright curve of space! Tell them to go away.
Banish them. Refuse to speak. Leave them, go upstairs to your room, turn out the
light and get into bed-I will go with you, I will be waiting for you, I will
tell you a better story than The Monkey’s Paw, or La Grande Breteche-I will
surround your bed, I will close the windows, pile a deep drift against the
door, so that none will ever again be able to enter. Speak to them!…It seemed
as if the little hissing voice came from a slow white spiral of falling flakes
in the corner by the front window- but he could not be sure. He felt himself
smiling, then, and said to the doctor, but without looking at him, looking
beyond him still-

“Oh, no I think not-“

“But are you sure, my boy?”

His father’s voice came softly and coldly
then- the familiar voice of silken warning….

“You needn’t answer at once, David- remember
we’re trying to help you-think it over and be quite sure, won’t you?”

He felt himself smiling again, at the notion
of being quite sure. What a joke! As if he weren’t so sure that reassurance was
no longer necessary, and all this cross-examination a ridiculous farce, a grotesque
parody! What could they know about it? Why, even now, even now, with the proof
so abundant, so formidable, so imminent, so appallingly present here in this
very room, could they believe it?-could even his mother believe it? No-it was
only too plain that if anything were said about it, the merest hint given, they
would be incredulous-they would laugh-they would say “Absurd!-think things
about him which weren’t true…

“Why no, I’m not worried-why should I be?”

He looked then at the doctor’s low-lidded
eyes, looked from one of them to the other, from one bead of light to the
other, and gave a little laugh.

The doctor seemed to be disconcerted by this.
He drew back in his chair, resting a fat white hand on either knee. The smile
faded slowly from his face.

“Well David!” he said, and paused gravely,
“I’m afraid you don’t take this quite seriously enough. I think you perhaps
don’t quite realize-don’t quite realize-“He took a deep breath, and turned, as
if helpless, at a loss for words, to the others. But Mother and Father were
both silent-no help was forthcoming.

“You must surely know, be aware, that you
have not been quite yourself, of late? Don’t you know that?”

It was amusing to watch the doctor’s renewed
attempt at a smile, a queer disorganized look, as of confidential
embarrassment.

His mother made a quick movement forward,
resting a hand on the back of the doctor’s chair.

“Thinking?” she said. “But my dear, about
what?”

This was a direct challenge-and would have to
be directly met. But before he met it, he looked again into the corner by the
door, as if for reassurance. He smiled again at what he saw, at what he heard.
The little spiral was still there, still softly whirling like the ghost of a
white kitten chasing the ghost of a white tail, and making as it did so the
faintest of whispers. It was all right! If only he could remain firm,
everything was going to be all right.

“Oh, about anything, about nothing,-you know
the way you do!”

“You mean-day-dreaming?”

“Oh, no-thinking!”

“But thinking about what?”

“Anything.”

He laughed a third time-but this time,
happening to glance upward towards his mother’s face, he was appalled at the
effect his laughter seemed to have upon her. Her mouth had opened in an
expression of horror… This was too bad! Unfortunate! He had known it would cause
pain, of course-but he hadn’t expected it to be quite as bad as this.
Perhaps-perhaps if he gave them a tiny gleaming hint-?

“About the snow,” he said.

“What on earth!” This was his father’s voice.
The brown slippers came a step nearer on the hearth-rug.

“But my dear, what do you mean!” This was his
mother’s voice.

The doctor merely stared.

“Just snow, that’s all. I like to think about
it.”

“Tell us about it, my boy.”

“But that’s all it is. There’s nothing to
tell. You know what snow is.”

This he said almost angrily, for he felt they
were trying to corner him. He turned sideways so as no longer to face the
doctor, and better to see the inch of blackness between the window-sill and the
lowered curtains, - the cold inch of beckoning and delicious night. At once he
felt better, more assured.

“Mother-can I go to bed, now, please? I’ve
got a headache.”

“But I thought you said-“

“It’s just come. It’s all these questions-!
Can I Mother?”

“You can go as soon as the doctor has
finished.”

“Don’t you think this thing ought to be gone
into thoroughly, and now?” This was his Father’s voice. The brown slippers
again came a step nearer; the voice was the well known “punishment” voice,
resonant and cruel.

Oh, what’s the use, Steven”-

Quite suddenly, everyone was silent. And
without precisely facing them, nevertheless he was aware that all three of them
were watching him with extraordinary intensity-staring hard at him-as if he had
done something monstrous, or was himself some kind of monster. He could hear
the soft irregular flutter of the flames; the tic-toc-tic-toc-tic of the clock;
far and faint, two sudden spurts of laughter from the kitchen, as quickly cut
off as begun, a murmur of water in the pipes; and then, the silence seemed to
deepen, to spread out, to become world long and worldwide, to become timeless
and shapeless, and to the center inevitably and rightly, with a slow and sleepy
but enormous concentration of all power, on the beginning of a new sound. What
this new sound was going to be, he knew perfectly well. It might begin with a
hiss, but it would end with a roar-there was no time to lose-he must escape. It
mustn’t happen here-

Without another word, he turned and ran up
the stairs.

IV

Not a moment to soon. The darkness was coming
in long white waves. A prolonged sibilance filled the night- a great seamless
seethe of wild influence went abruptly across it- a cold low humming shook the
windows. He shut the door and flung off his clothes in the dark. The bare black
floor was like a little raft tossed in waves of snow, almost overwhelmed,
washed under whitely, up again, and smothered in curled billows of white. The
snow was laughing: it spoke from all sides at once: it pressed closer to him as
he ran and jumped exulting into his bed.

“Listen
to us!” it said. “Listen we have come to tell you the story we told you about.
You remember? Lie down. Shut your eyes, now-you will no longer see much-in this
white darkness who could see, or want to see? We will take the place of
everything…Listen-”

A beautiful varying dance of snow began at
the front of the room, came forward and then retreated, flattened out toward
the floor, then rose fountain-like to the ceiling, swayed, recruited itself
from a new stream of flakes which poured laughing in through the humming
window, advanced again, lifted long white arms. It said peace, it said
remoteness, it said cold—it said—

But then a gash of horrible light fell
brutally across the room from the opening door-the snow drew back
hissing-something alien had come into the room-something hostile. This thing
rushed at him, clutched at him, shook him-and he was not merely horrified, he
was filled with such a loathing as he had never known. What was this? This
cruel disturbance? This act of anger and hate? It was as if he had to reach up
a hand toward another world for any understanding of it- an effort of which he
was only barely capable. But of that other world he still remembered just
enough to know the exorcising words. They tore themselves from his other life
suddenly—

“Mother! Mother! Go away! I hate you!”

And with that effort, everything was solved,
everything became all right: the seamless hiss advanced once more, the long
white wavering lines rose and fell like enormous whispering sea-waves, the whisper
becoming louder, the laughter more intensely maniacal.

“Listen!” it said. “We’ll tell you the last,
the most beautiful and secret story—shut your eyes—it is a very small story—a
story that gets smaller and smaller—it comes inward instead of opening like a
flower—it is a flower becoming a seed—a little cold seed—do you hear” We are
leaning closer to you”—

The hiss was now becoming a roar—the whole
world was a vast moving screen of snow—but even now it said peace, it said
remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

I am a stranger on the earth; hide not thy will from me. It
is an old belief and it is a good belief, that our lives are a pilgrim's
progress. We are pilgrims on the earth and strangers, we come from afar and we
are going far. The journey of our lives goes from the loving breast of our
mothers on earth, to the arms of God in heaven. Everything on earth changes: we
have no abiding city here.

It is Gods will that we should part with what is dearest on
earth. We ourselves change in many respects. We are not what we once were and
we shall not remain what we are now. The face that once had the early dew of
the morning gets its wrinkles. The eyes speak of sadness. The hair turns gray
or we lose it. Ah, indeed we only pass through the earth, we only pass through
life.

I once saw a very beautiful picture; it was a landscape at
evening. Through the landscape a road leads to a high mountain, far, far away.
On the top of that mountain is a city where on the setting sun casts a glory.
On the road walks a pilgrim, he has been walking for a good long while already
and he is very tired. And now he meets a woman or a figure in black. That angel
of God has been placed there to encourage the pilgrims and to answer their
questions. And the pilgrim asks her. "Does the road go uphill all the
way?" And the answer is. "Yes, to the very end." And he asks
again. "And will the journey take all day long?" And the answer is.
"From morn till night my friend."

Have not we all strife on earth?

And when each of us goes back to our daily concerns and the
daily duties. Let us not forget that things are not what they seem. That God,
by the events of daily life teaches us all higher lessons. That our lives are a
pilgrim's progress. That we are strangers on the earth; but that we have a God
who preserves strangers. And that we are all brothers and sisters.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

I am a raindrop...
and I fell crystallized one gray winter morning, in the yesterday of your
life... it was cold... so very cold... but the year was new and you had
plans... and dreams of warm places... you drew their pictures in the frost...
and I froze them into your memory... It was January... such a long time ago.

And I glistened at
the tip of an icicle as you climbed the hill with your sled... And when you
raced down the long icy path, I stung your nose with tiny needles of snow...
and dripped from your overshoes when you stood in the doorway that evening...
It was February, and you were cold and tired... and hungry.

And you looked
through me one afternoon as I ran slowly down your window pane. The winds were
high and your new newspaper kite was ready... but the sun was gone and I was
there... making you wait until tomorrow... It was March, and you were
impatient.

And I followed the
two of you into the woods one gray-green day... but when I touched her face,
you ran to hide from me... I watched from a leaf as you kissed her... gently...
and she kissed you back...It was April... and you were in love... for the first
time.

And I mixed with
your tears as you said goodbye to your grandmother... And when the prayer had
been said... and her song had been sung... I tried to tell you that crying is
good... For how can one know happiness until one has felt sorrow...? It was
May... and the flowers were coming up again.

And I was dew,
sparkling in the grass as the sun came up one summer morning...and you had a
day to remember...It was June and everything was right with your world... and
the child you’d just brought into it.

And I stayed away in
a cloud one night and let you lie on your back and look up at the stars... It
was July, the air was clear and you realized at last, what a joyous thing it is
... to be alive.

I am only a rain
drop... but I created the snow on the mountains you climbed... I made the
rainbow you saw... I started the rivers you crossed and I filled the oceans you
sailed... It was August and you and I were somewhere... doing our thing.

And I ran as a brook
in a meadow as you walked beside me one sunny, golden day... I listened as you
told your son about the mysteries of nature, and the realities of life... It
was September... and the stream of time had begun to flow a little faster...

And as I danced with
the leaves through their last mad whirl... you gathered together... family and
friends... to honor your son... and his bride... it was a time for festival...
and a farewell toast to the brilliance of autumn. It was October, and winter
would soon be here.

...And when my
sisters clung to the thin bare branches of the trees outside your window... you
sat by the fire and looked at the fading pictures... and tiny scraps of life that
had been saved for such a day... It was November... and the days were getting
shorter...

I am a raindrop...
and I fell slowly one night... changing to snow... covering the earth with a
soft white blanket... and as you watched the lights twinkling in the evergreen
boughs, I heard your heart say you were happy... because you knew that if one
light should fail, the others would still burn bright... It was December... and
you were sleepy...

May you and yours be
blessed this year and for all those yet to come, with all your hearts desires.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Love the quick profit (prophet), the annual raise, vacation
with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors
and to die, and you will have a window in your head my friend. Not even your
future will be a mystery anymore. Your mind will be programmed on a disk and
shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will
call you. When they want you to die for profit (prophet) they will let you know.

So dear friend, everyday do something that won’t
compute. Love the world, work for nothing, take all that you have and give it
away and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government
and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.
Give approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man or
woman has not encountered they have not destroyed. Ask questions that have no
answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is
the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that
the leaves are harvested when they have rotted to mold. Call that profit.
Prophecy such returns. Put faith in the two inches of humus that will build
under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion, put your ear close and
hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the
world. Laugh, laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful even though you have
considered all the facts. Ask yourself, will this satisfy a woman satisfied to
bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go
with your love to the fields. Lie easy in the shade and rest your head in his
or her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicians
can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark a
false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox that makes more tracks than
necessary, some in the wrong direction.

Now I plunge my pen against
the page and scribble toward a purpose unperceived. For here within my fragile
fractured frame, I am no more a poet than a rose; and though the visions I do
view, bid beauty to my meaning (my muse is busied elsewhere, nursing other
selves). Therefore unfailingly I fall into shadow, baptized by merciless
melancholy. Enabled to imbue with silhouette of shadow a bit of martyred matter,
from so faint a slate as this, I would label it as mine (ostensibly): mine to
brag of, mine to burn; but when I feature feelings from the fire, they float
away from me, like writing on the water.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

I feel the motion of the car before I open my
eyes. The air is blue-black, brown-black, black-black. Smell of gas, oil,
animals. I’m in the trunk. My wrists and ankles tied. Tape over my mouth it almost
covers my nose but I can breathe barely. I must have been here for hours,
everything’s stiff and my head throbs like someone’s drumming on china. The car
stops. He turns off the motor- but there are no traffic sounds. No people
sounds, no wind. What place has no wind? I turn my head toward the sounds like
people watch radios when something terrible happens. My palms are sweating.
Where am I? The trunk squeaks as he lifts it up and the sun blinds me. He
almost looks like a faceless Jesus surrounded by light. He pulls me out of the
trunk and bangs my head against the door. I try to cry out, but it comes out
like a hum. He drags me, half-standing, along a dirt road into a house. I can’t
see any other houses and it looks like a farm. The screen door bangs behind me
and I feel a deep, deep pressure inside. All the rules have changed here.

I’m dragged down a
hall like a bag and I look for a phone, other doors. Nothing but bare floors
and brown boxes in small rooms. He pulls me onto the floor. Tilts his head to
the side and gazes at me as if I was a pet then walks out. I’m lying there for
a long time, trying to get the tape off of me. My eyes are tearing. I don’t
make a sound. I can’t get up and I keep rolling from side to side, trying not
to make noise. I’ve got to get him to talk to me. If I can get this thing off
my face I can talk to him.I’ll tell him
my name. Have you killed other women in here? I’m thinking you’ve got hundreds
of them nailed down, hung on walls, hanging from the ceiling dead in the summer
heat. Why did you pick me? If I had stayed to finish at the library I would
have been there twenty minutes longer maybe I’d have been O.K. Would have
rushed into the house, books piled up in my arms like a baby, and blurted
explanations why I was sorry. So sorry I’m late everyone. Would you have waited
for me anyway? Would you have picked another woman?Would I have read about her in the paper and
said oh my god, I was there that night…and called all my friends in a panic.
Telling them then how much I loved them as if I’d never have the chance again.
I wonder what everyone is doing now? Putting up signs? Showing my picture on
the evening news? Calling old friends? Maybe I’m not even considered missing
yet. The family will fall apart and my parents will go crazy, slowly. My
brother will be so quite at the funeral and insist that the casket be closed. I
never even told anyone what kind of funeral I wanted when I died. Maybe years
from now they’ll find my skeleton on the floor here and they’ll have to use my
dental records to identify me. My family will say:“At least we know now. We always hoped she
was alive somewhere. We just hope she’s in peace.” When I sleep my dreams are
crazy. I’m flying over fields.” I don’t think I sleep for more than twenty
minutes and when I wake up, it feels like I’m under a heavy blanket. I’m still
here. As I wake up I hear a dog barking in the
distance and I think I’m in my parent’s house in South Carolina. When I open my eyes, there’s
a shotgun pressed between them. I’ll never get married. I’ll never have kids.
I’ll never go to Europe. I’ll never learn to
play the piano. I’ll never write a book. The last thing I hear is a click.

About Me

I'm a semi-retired musician/entertainer who creates and performs his/her own music, writer, artist, painter, photographer, mathematician and I’m into making movies with high def video cameras. My taste in music is eclectic I listen to and can play most contemporary genres.
Before my musical career I’ve been an RN, phlebotomist, and was successful in a number of blue collar professions. I have several college degrees but mastered in mathematics. Also I'm very into computer science and the Internet. I’m a voracious reader, reading about two nonfiction books a week.
My goal for 2015 is to create a solid presence for both me and my works on the internet.
Personally I’m extremely atypical with a strong sense of self. I also have a genuine mind-set regarding the human condition. I don’t hate but rather feel love for everything except for humanities inhumanity it seems for every existing thing on the planet.
At this time I’m searching ubiquitously for my soul mate.
I hope that this epistle finds you and yours both healthy and in high spirits.
Cheers,
Adrian Alexis